Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Browse the Knowledge Base!

Can computers learn to read? We think so. "Read the Web" is a research project that attempts to create a computer system that learns over time to read the web. Since January 2010, our computer system called NELL (Never-Ending Language Learner) has been running continuously, attempting to perform two tasks each day:

• First, it attempts to "read," or extract facts from text found in hundreds of millions of web pages (e.g., playsInstrument(George_Harrison, guitar)).
• Second, it attempts to improve its reading competence, so that tomorrow it can extract more facts from the web, more accurately.

So far, NELL has accumulated over 50 million candidate beliefs by reading the web, and it is considering these at different levels of confidence. NELL has high confidence in 2,810,379 of these beliefs — these are displayed on this website. It is not perfect, but NELL is learning. You can track NELL's progress below or @cmunell on Twitter, browse and download its knowledge base, read more about our technical approach, or join the discussion group.

Recently-Learned Facts

instance	iteration	date learned	confidence
jelly_beans__smoothie_blend is a kind of candy	1111	06-jul-2018	98.0
judge_navanethem_pillay is a judge	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
anthony_johnson is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
phayre_s_squirrel is a mammal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cooking_utensils is an item found in the kitchen	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
john_mcenroe is an athlete who wins us_open	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
dave_navarro is a musician who is part of red_hot_chili_peppers	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
george_allen is related to university_of_michigan	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
elizabeth and anna001 are siblings	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
kolo is a TV station in the city reno	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8